Campus News

Berkeley Voices: As crises escalate, so does our fascination with cults

December 2, 2024

Like millions of other Americans, UC Berkeley Professor Poulomi Saha watched a lot of docuseries about cults during the COVID-19 pandemic. The more Saha watched, the more they felt a kind of change within themself. “I was absolutely enthralled,” said Saha. “My reaction no longer fit that old script, the script that I had internalized. I wasn’t just having a passing interest. I wasn’t sort of mildly terrified. I was thinking, “Oh, wow, that makes good sense.’” Saha wanted to understand why.

So they started a class, called Cults in Popular Culture, where Saha and their...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/11/25/berkeley-voices-poulomi-saha-on-cults/

L&S staff honored with 2024 Excellence in Advising & Student Services awards

November 22, 2024

UC Berkeley’s Council on Advising and Student Services and awards planning committee recently announced the recipients of the 2024 Excellence in Advising & Student Services Awards, which recognize the recipients' positive and innovative impacts on student learning,...

A nearby supernova could end the search for dark matter

November 21, 2024
Robert Sanders

Artist rendering of a black galaxy with stars and one large star, glowing red and black with blue lights shooting off of itThe search for the universe’s dark matter could end tomorrow — given a nearby supernova and a little luck.

The nature of dark matter has eluded astronomers for 90 years, since the realization that 85% of the matter in the universe is not visible through our telescopes. The most likely dark matter...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/11/21/a-nearby-supernova-could-end-the-search-for…

‘I’m just one of millions of migrant students working hard to achieve their goals’

October 24, 2024
Anne Brice

In this first-person narrative, Yesenia Ochoa, a first-year student at UC Berkeley, tells UC Berkeley News about her experience being a student from a migrant family and her educational aspirations.

“I grew up in Yuba City. My parents immigrated there from a little village on the side of a hill called Las Estacas in Michoacan, Mexico, when they were 23. They work in the fields — agriculture is a huge industry in the region — so they leave really early in the morning to harvest peaches, walnuts, tomatoes, almonds, almond fields, things like that.

As teenagers...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/10/21/im-just-one-of-millions-of-migrant-students…

Four 2024 Nobel Prize winners are connected to UC Berkeley's College of Letters & Science

October 16, 2024
Nobel Prize logoDid you know?

Nine of the ten UC Berkeley faculty members holding Nobel Prizes reside in UC Berkeley's College of Letters & Science. L&S has a deep legacy of groundbreaking research and transformative discoveries, and as a result, has generated several faculty members and alumni honored with Nobel Prize awards for their academic contributions. For the 2024 Nobel Prizes, four of the Nobel...

Times Higher Ed ranks UC Berkeley No. 1 public university in U.S.

October 16, 2024
Public Affairs

UC Berkeley is the No. 1 public university in the U.S and the eighth-best university in the world, according to the Times Higher Education’s 2025 World University Rankings, released on Oct. 8. Berkeley has held the ranking of top U.S. public university for nine of the past 10 years.

This year’s rankings evaluated more than 2,000 universities from 115 countries and territories and were based on five criteria: teaching, research environment, research quality, industry...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/10/09/times-higher-ed-ranks-uc-berkeley-no-1-publ…

World Humanities Report, directed by UC Berkeley's Sara Guyer, warns of extinction risk to human knowledge

October 14, 2024
Sarah Fullerton

What role do the humanities play in a world challenged by climate change, rising authoritarianism, censorship, racism, wars and collapsed economies?

The humanities and their forms of historical, visual and cultural literacy are critical to understanding and addressing the human experience and the planet’s survival, says Sara Guyer, dean of the Division of Arts and Humanities in UC Berkeley’s College of Letters and Science.

She should know: Guyer is director of the prestigious World Humanities Report, a major...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/10/14/world-humanities-report-directed-by-uc-berk…

Department of Music opens new performance hall on campus

October 10, 2024
by Alexander Rony

UC Berkeley’s Department of Music unveiled the new Helen and Thomas Wu Performance Hall in September, following an extensive renovation that was years in the making. The reopened space includes a larger stage, new seats, and state-of-the-art sound, lighting, and digital technology upgrades.

David Baker, a UC Berkeley Ph.D., awarded 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

October 9, 2024
Robert Sanders

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry was shared by David Baker, a biochemist who received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1989 working with Randy Schekman, a professor of molecular and cell biology who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

At Berkeley, Baker conducted research primarily on protein transport and protein trafficking in yeast, the field in which Schekman received the prize. But after a postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF, he joined the biochemistry...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/10/09/david-baker-a-uc-berkeley-ph-d-awarded-2024…

Political scientists launch the Berkeley Center for American Democracy

October 8, 2024
by Alexander Rony

Americans are feeling pessimistic about their political landscape. Polls show that US voters’ top concern involves political extremism and threats to democracy, eclipsing perennial issues like immigration and the economy. Last year, the Pew Research Center...